Leadership, Discourse, and Ethnicity

Janet Holmes, Meredith Marra, and Bernadette Vine

Abstract

This book is about workplace discourse and it examines the relationships among leadership, ethnicity, and language use. Taking a social constructionist approach to the ways in which leadership is enacted through discourse, the book problematizes the concept of ethnicity and demonstrates the importance of context—particularly the community of practice—in determining what counts as relevant in the analysis of ethnicity. The chapters analyze everyday workplace interactions supplemented by interview data to examine the ways in which workplace leaders use language to achieve their transactional and ... More

This book is about workplace discourse and it examines the relationships among leadership, ethnicity, and language use. Taking a social constructionist approach to the ways in which leadership is enacted through discourse, the book problematizes the concept of ethnicity and demonstrates the importance of context—particularly the community of practice—in determining what counts as relevant in the analysis of ethnicity. The chapters analyze everyday workplace interactions supplemented by interview data to examine the ways in which workplace leaders use language to achieve their transactional and relational goals in contrasting “ethnicized” contexts, two of which are Māori and two European/Pākehā. The analysis pays special attention to the roles of ethnic values, beliefs, and orientations in talk.

End Matter

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